Before them, rinsed by rain and approaching steadily, was the land. They stood on deck watching their ship slice through the muscle of water, bringing them inexorably toward their new life. In all, it had taken twenty-one days and seven thousand watery miles. The morning unfolded starkly, white a...
Uncle Innocent and Prayma, Auntie Angel-Face and the girls. Sarath and Mabel, Anthony and Coco with their own little bevy of children. There were others too, from Toronto and Perth, from Calcutta and Lahore, and Grace’s old childhood friend from Glasgow. There were the Sisters of St Peter and St ...
13. I SHOULD NOT have come back, decided the adult Cecily, clutching her bag of translucent fruit. But hadn’t she been told to do just that, when she had finally caved in, and begged for help? ‘Go back to the beginning if you want to get rid of the ...
Moths and antique dust that piled up in small hills behind the coloured-glass doors. The beetles had drilled holes in the fretwork of the frames and sawdust had gathered in small mounds on the ground. It was a useless house really, everything was broken or badly mended, everything was covered in ...